Spurned schoolboys video revenge lands Indias eBay chief in prison

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IT WAS meant as revenge with the bonus that it raked in a tidy profit. When his girlfriend broke up with him, the teeanger retaliated by selling friends a mobile phone video clip of the pair in a compromising situation.

Two months later, the prank has escalated to the level of a national scandal, with the 17-year-old boy arrested and the head of India’s eBay-owned internet auction site flung into jail after the images were discovered for sale on the web.

The scandal has caused a sensation in a conservative nation where sexuality is a taboo subject, not least because the teenagers were students at Delhi Public School, one of the nation’s most prestigious educational institutions.

When the couple parted, the boy began selling the video clip to his friends for 100 rupees (£1.15), sending it by mobile phone and e-mail. But then distribution spiralled and the clip was passed on around Delhi and to the rest of the country. When the school authorities discovered what had happened, they expelled the pair and banned mobile phones from the campus.

A recipient of the clip, allegedly an engineering student from a technological college, posted it on Baazee.com, India’s largest online auction house, which is owned by eBay, the American web giant. When Baazee became aware of it, it pulled the video from the site, but police were on the trail.

On Saturday, police arrested Avnish Bajaj, an American citizen who is the site’s manager, remanding him in custody for two weeks in the notorious Tihar jail. The boy, who has not been named, was arrested on Sunday night as he arrived at Delhi airport with his mother after a trip to Nepal.

Both are being held under the Indian Information Technology Act, which bans the transmission and sale of pornographic material. The boy appeared in juvenile court yesterday and was remanded in custody for another day.

“(The boy’s) arrest is key in this case of pornographic images being transmitted to many places. He started the process of such images being transmitted,” said Kamal Kant Vyas, the additional deputy commissioner of police. Baazee.com and eBay expressed outrage at Mr Bajaj’s arrest, saying that the company had removed the video as soon as it became aware of it, and that the case against it was baseless.

India’s most powerful software industry lobby group also demanded that Mr Bajaj be released. “The arrest and detention of Mr Bajaj is uncalled for and not expected in a mature democracy like ours,” the National Association of Software and Service Companies said, adding that the arrest was “extreme” and “unnecessary”.

The scandal has shocked parents in a country where most frown on dating and mothers encourage daughters to conceal any previous relationships, however innocent, when meeting with prospective husbands.

The students involved came from affluent families, the boy’s father being a prominent businessman and the girl’s father a senior military officer. A survey of Delhi teenagers after the scandal suggested that at least 10 per cent had had sex with a schoolmate, shocking teachers and parents.

Several schools have since banned mobile phones. But little has been able to stop the proliferation of the clip. “Half of Delhi has seen the message and the other half is watching it on video,” one resident said.